Tragedy in Dedham: The Story of the Sacco-Vanzetti Case – Review

I have a guest post on Mystery Fanfare in which I discuss Francis Russell’s Edgar-winning true crime epic Tragedy in Dedham. Here’s an extract:

Recently I sat down to read one of those great award-winning books that was a major hit upon publication but has been largely forgotten today. Tragedy in Dedham is Francis Russell’s account of the Sacco-Vanzetti case and won the Edgar Award for Best Fact Crime in 1963. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti’s names have become shorthand for how easily a miscarriage of justice can occur when xenophobia and prejudice are at work. The two men were Italian anarchists who emigrated to the United States in 1908. Living in Boston, at the time a hotbed of political radicalism especially among the Italian community, Sacco and Vanzetti were charged with armed robbery and murder after a guard and a paymaster were killed during a holdup of the Morrill Shoe Company in Braintree in 1920. Their subsequent trial was widely viewed as unfair and tainted by anti-Italian and anti-immigrant bias. They were convicted and sentenced to death in 1921, and finally executed in 1927, by which time their case had become a cause célèbre with protest marches being held in major cities on every continent. In the Soviet Union, the case was used as propaganda to highlight the brutality of the capitalist system the two Italians had opposed. Today, few commentators would claim that Sacco and Vanzetti received a fair trial, but that still leaves the question open — were they innocent?

Many thanks to Janet Rudolph for publishing the piece. This is the second time I have written about the work of the somewhat forgotten historian Francis Russell. Here’s a piece I wrote about Russell’s classic biography of President Warren G Harding The Shadow of Blooming Grove, and how it inspired crime novelist James Ellroy.